MEMBER DIARY

‘Crazy People’ and Obamacare

What Dudley Moore Could Teach Obama about 'Re-Marketing' and 'Re-branding'

The New York Times reports that an ad campaign aimed at funneling Millennials into Obamacare appeals to imagined motherly advice: “Son, you need to buy health insurance.” Some of the ads are sponsored by the AARP. It is fitting that the AARP should be behind such ads. After all, if young, healthy people do not sign up in droves, then we old, sick people will have no one to subsidize our health costs.

Millennials tend to have a keen sense of irony, and are all the more easily influenced by humorous advertisements. Perhaps, then, the ad campaigns should take the example of Dudley Moore’s ‘truth in advertising’ strategy in Crazy People:

Volvo: They may be boxy, but they’re good.

Jaguar: For men who’d like hand-jobs from beautiful women they hardly know.

Forget Paris. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece. We’re nicer.

Sony: Because Caucasians are just too damn tall.

I offer the following as mere suggestions.

Obamacare: Sure, you’ll wind up paying a hell of a lot more for a product that you neither want or need. But unless you do, the whole damn thing unravels. Dude, we need you.

Obamacare: It’s one, big goddamn turd, but, hey, it’s all we’ve got. You might as well make the best of it.